A Title IX History Lesson
Over at Observer-Reporter.com, John Steigerwald has done some hard thinking about the men’s sports cuts at Duquesne University, and dove back into the history books to do some primary source research:
It [Title IX] was supposed to be about providing equal opportunities for both genders, not equal outcomes. Feminists took over the enforcement of Title IX in the mid-’90s and succeeded in making enforcement of the law about outcomes.
In the beginning, the law actually made some sense. It required institutions that were getting federal funding to provide equal access to male and female students interested in participating in athletics. By the time the feminists were through distorting the law, all over the country, colleges were desperately trying to cajole semi-interested women into playing sports while they were eliminating men’s teams. In June, 1972 Congress passed Title IX and here is a passage from the law as it was written:
“Nothing in the law shall be interpreted to require any educational institution to grant preferential or disparate treatment to the members of one sex on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of that sex participating in or receiving the benefits of any federally supported program or activity, in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of that sex in any community, State, section or other area.”
Interesting.